Posts tagged Van der Veen

Recently I joined Facebook to give DoddemaGen greater exposure and let’s admit it, I need help.  The flow of information coming my way is starting to slow way down.  That’s where Facebook comes in.  I immediately noticed that there was not just one Doddema but many, many Doddema’s out there!  An untapped resource.  I’ve already made many contacts and my greatest find and admittedly joy comes from, of all places, Belgium!  While some of us headed west to the United States, there are those that headed east….

My newest family members are Ronald and his father, Tjerk.  Tjerk’s parents and children emigrated to Belgium in May of 1957.  That’s a story I’d like to hear!  Although Tjerk doesn’t speak English, Ronald has been translating our correspondence.  Within a couple days, Tjerk sent me this message full of genealogy – 4 generations worth.  My head is already spinning.

Why?  There’s names that I’ve never seen before! I have Ronald’s great grandfather in my database but never any of Jakob Doddema‘s (1888-1979) children.  Tjerk takes it a little further back with the Jakob’s own grandfather, Geert Hinderks Doddema (1831-1908).  While I thought I had this completed…Tjerk and Ronald hand me some more names that weren’t in the Genlias database, which is understandable since it takes time to add records.

I’ll be adding the message to the forum for further research in another post.

At this point, I just want to thank Tjerk and Ronald for their help!  Without them, I wouldn’t be able to put all this together.

For those of you interested, how are we related?  Ronald’s great grandfather, Jakob Doddema and my grandfather, Tammo Doddema were 4th cousins.  Small world indeed.